Traffic snafus? Get used to it.

Yesterday was a lollapalooza in the ongoing work on the city's water mains.

Drivers at midday found it nearly impossible to navigate northbound or southbound in downtown, faced with the following obstacles --

• Southbound traffic on Central Avenue was blocked at West 2nd Street;
• Northbound and southbound traffic on Park Avenue was blocked between 2nd Street and North Avenue; and
• Northbound traffic on Watchung Avenue was blocked at East 5th Street

Hopefully no expectant mother in labor was waiting for a bus to Trinitas to deliver.

So many police cars were seen tied up at these and various other intersections that I noticed a street opening by the same crews at Madison and Stelle Avenues was being covered by a shiny black unmarked police car.

"Get used to it," I was advised by one officer I stopped to chat with, "looks like it will continue at least through next month."

The ubiquitous crews in the tan trucks of J. Fletcher Creamer & Son are working on contract for New Jersey American Water (formerly the locally-owned Elizabethtown Water, whose foreign ownership is disguised by the new corporate name).

Monday was the first I noticed any kind of a public sign about the work that has been going on for about two months now -- at the selfsame corner of Stelle and Madison, where the sign above was neatly stapled to a utility pole.

What are they doing? Now you know.

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-- Dan Damon

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